


say hello, to our goodbye

by springbreeze



Category: Senyuu.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-15 04:57:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2216607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/springbreeze/pseuds/springbreeze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a life where I was allowed to know you, I think we were happy. So in the world where we did not meet, to the “you” that I could not meet—</p>
            </blockquote>





	say hello, to our goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers all over for Chapter 0 of Part 4. This was kind of written spur of the moment, so it probably doesn’t really make sense… Just like Chapter 0, ha.

_A thousand years can’t separate us._

* * *

He looked up, down, side to side, and then turned around to check his back. Nothing in sight but endless stretches of dull off-white. Or perhaps it was a shade of grey? With his recently deteriorating eyesight, it was difficult to tell. But the color seemed to be shifting even now, rippling back and forth faster than he could follow.

_A dream,_  Alba concluded. This indescribable space, with nothing and no one as far as he could see, could only be the product of a dream. A very uneventful dream, at that. How silly of him to fall asleep when there was so much work to be done. Certainly, he and Salt had managed to exert a shred of control over magic, but it was far from ready to be used in practical applications, much less to make everyday lives easier.

 _But a break isn’t bad once in a while either._  Seeing as he had few options at the moment, Alba began walking forward. Exhaustion seemed to be beyond him now, so unlike the aches and pains he was accustomed to at his age. It was a refreshing, nostalgic feeling, a reminder of the days he had spent in his childhood running around without a care in the world, going on make-believe adventures and believing he could be a hero of the people.

He walked, and walked, and walked still further, yet the scenery did not change a single bit and Alba could not tell if he had advanced at all or not. For all he knew, he could still be in the same place he had started. Folding his arms, Alba closed his eyes in contemplation. If this were a dream, he would wake up eventually, and all he had to do was wait. But what kind of bizarre dream involved nothing at all occurring? Was his imagination so mundane?

“…Hey. You there.”

“Uwah!”

A sudden voice from behind startled Alba, and he whirled around in a panic. At first, he saw nothing, but Alba dropped his line of sight to see a person standing there, an air of hostility surrounding them. He blinked once and realized it was… a young man? No, even younger. A boy? A boy, shorter than he was, with a tattered brown cloak slung over his left side and black spiky hair. “W-Who’re you?” Alba asked cautiously, glancing around. It seemed impossible for the boy to have been following him the whole time, and moreover, there was no place at all to hide, in this strange dream-space of his.

“That’s my line,” the boy said sharply, glaring at Alba with one bright crimson eye. The boy’s left eye, Alba couldn’t help but notice, was closed, with a cruel-looking slash running through the eyelid. There was little doubt that the eye was probably useless. He winced internally; the wound looked nothing short of painful.

“Um, well…” Alba tapped a finger to his chin, an old habit resurfacing. “I think… this is a dream. Maybe.”

At the last, unsure word, the boy raised an eyebrow incredulously, and took a step towards him. As the boy drew closer, Alba took notice of other things: smaller scratches and bruises all over, the wariness with which the boy moved, as if ready to attack at a given moment.

A quiet sort of exhaustion, in his visible eye, the tone of his voice, the deep frown lines creasing his forehead. What sorts of things had this boy lived through, to give such an impression of having lived far beyond his years?

“A dream?”

“Well, I can’t think of any other explanation.”

“What’s someone as weird as you doing in my dream?”

“H-Hey! Isn’t it the other way? Why is someone like you in  _my_  dream?”

“I’m not just some dream person.”

“Neither am I.”

Their conversation quickly reached a dead-end, with Alba fidgeting nervously and the boy staring as impassively as ever at him. There was no real way to prove either of their existences to each other, and if this meeting was indeed a dream, there was no real point either, if they would simply wake up in the end. Alba glanced over at the boy’s face again, his gaze drawn irresistibly to the scar over the eye. “By the way, does that hurt?” he asked quizzically, concern bleeding into his question.

The air between them seemed to freeze in an instant. He had stepped on a landmine, Alba realized belatedly. It was clear that his eye was not a topic to be discussed, and the boy’s expression was inscrutable as he slowly reached a hand up to his face, running a finger lightly down the cut. “…It doesn’t,” he replied shortly, dropping his arm. “Not anymore.”

“I see.”

Alba almost reached out to the boy in an attempt to examine his eye, the habit of whirring through possible uses for magic nearly overtaking his senses. One day, hopefully soon, maybe magic could be controlled to such a degree that it would be possible to heal a wound like this. But something else had compelled the motion too. An aching feeling, in Alba’s chest. For the boy, but more than that, for something… something he couldn’t quite place. Something about this place, about this meeting, about this boy, was all wrong. No, perhaps not even wrong, but not right, either.

“You look strange.” The sound of the boy’s voice snapped Alba from impending, swirling thoughts, and he focused his attention forward once more. “I don’t—… You’re not supposed to be…” The boy’s words trailed off and he averted his gaze from Alba’s eyes. “You’re old.”

“…Huh?” Alba rubbed the back of his neck. The truth was nothing to take offense at, although the reminder stung a little. “Well, yeah… I’ve lived for a while now.”

“…It doesn’t suit you.” The words floated over to Alba in a quiet mutter. “You’re older than me. And bigger. It’s all… strange, somehow.”

Letting out a breath, Alba smiled wryly. “You feel it too, don’t you?”

The tiniest of nods. The boy stepped even closer, until there was only a foot’s distance between them, and lifted his head to stare into Alba’s face. His single red eye, like the color of a brilliant sunset, met a soft dark brown. Abruptly, the boy frowned again, and he asked, hesitantly, “Does… something hurt?”

“…No?” Alba blinked in confusion at the sudden question, and was startled when something small and wet fell from his eyes. “Ah—”

“Are you sad or something?”

“I don’t think so. But now that you mention it— Aah—” Wiping frantically at his eyes, Alba let out a tiny chuckle. He gave up when the tears showed no signs of stopping and simply let them roll down his cheeks, dripping discreetly to the ground.

“Then why are you crying?”

“I wonder.” The corners of his mouth couldn’t help but quirk upward slightly. “I’ve said it already, and you said it too, but all of this really is strange.”

A silent agreement, it seemed, from the boy as he tugged uncomfortably at his cloak. At length, the boy made as if to stretch his right hand out towards Alba, and then reconsidered it. “Do… I know you?” he asked quietly, directly. “Have we met before?”

Alba mulled the answer over, glancing at the boy’s face again. That distinctive red… He wanted to see its matching partner. “I don’t know,” Alba said at last, with a faint smile.

“But I think… No, I’m sure… we were supposed to. Don’t you think so too, S—”

* * *

The gently bubbling green contents of a test tube swam into focus bit by bit as Alba slowly slid his eyes open, feeling dazed. Painstakingly, he lifted his head from his folded arms, wincing at the creaks and cracks he could hear from his neck and back. Sleeping on a desk at his age was certainly taking its toll. He could hear the tinkering of glass from the room off to the side, undoubtedly Salt fiddling with something or another.

He blinked, and was startled when something small and wet fell, splattering onto the first of a pile of papers. It couldn’t possibly be the roof leaking—they had fixed that hole months ago. Alba blinked again, and yet more dark spots appeared on the papers. Where was this water coming from?

 _Ah_ , he realized, as another drop hit the back of his hand this time. He lifted it to wipe at his eyes.  _I was… dreaming._

Images flashed through Alba’s mind: a white, grey space, the figure of a person, red, red, red—

_A piercing red, like the color of a sunset._

Even as he attempted to remember, the memory of the dream slipped further away every second, fading, splintering, dissolving into wisps that Alba could not hold onto for all that he tried, and he was left with only whirling, ambiguous emotions.

He had seen a very strange dream. A joyful, melancholy dream filled with opportunities and regrets, and most of all, the blurry face of a person he had never met, in a place he had never been. But one thing was clear.

It had only been a dream.


End file.
